You may have spotted Ben commenting right here on TinkerTry "Version 1.1 is out now!" He's right! I hadn't yet spotted the August 4th announcements, to thanks to Ben, I'm now kicking the tires on a fresh copy of Windows 10. I'm using some PCs where I "convinced" the 1.0…
Wow. 2TB SSDs. They're here at last! Samsung is first out of the chute, delivering their 850 EVO 2TB SSD models to consumers now, and the 850 PRO 2TB variant coming in early August. There is a relatively unknown and pricey newcomer called Fixstar, but their 3TB and 6TB models are currently still on…
Let's say you add a second host (server) to your home lab. It has a newer CPU that's different enough that you're prevented from performing a vMotion. Specifically, when you try to vMotion vCenter (VCSA) itself, when you get to the screen where you try to "Select a valid destination compute…
It's spring cleaning time! I was Googling around today for the latest on drive erasure techniques, and was pleasantly surprised to spot this detailed article: ZDNet How to securely erase hard drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) Thank you, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, for kindly featuring the…
If you use thin provisioning in your home lab, it's quite likely you'll accidentally fill one of your drives to 100%, even if you have drive space warnings set. Hitting capacity has the effect of pausing your beloved VMs that use that datastore, forever. Well, at least until you come up with a way…
This is one of those "why didn't I think of this earlier" ideas. When tinkering with various USB drives I use in my home office, finding labels that can stick to them can be a challenge, especially if I'd rather not obscure the drive's capacity label or activity LED. I'm also not a fan of…
There's a lot of reasons you'll want to think about your future home lab. Part of looking ahead means researching evolving standards. Recently, Intel pulled a bit of a surprise on the world. Read all about it in this excellent piece by Sam Byford at The Verge: USB-C has already won: One reversible…
If you've followed TinkerTry for a while, you'll know I've been taking a look at Veeam, NAKIVO, and many other backup and recovery solutions suitable for home virtualization labs. See also my December 10, 2014 post Free NFR of Veeam Availability Suite v8 with Backup & Replication for VCPs,…
Wouldn't it be nice to have everything on my SSD encrypted, without the overhead of encryption software like Microsoft Bitlocker, Symantec Encryption Desktop, or TrueCrypt? Turning on hard drive password protection on my Lenovo W520 seemed like a good idea. It worked pretty well with my Samsung 840…
Always an honor to join Jim on the air, getting to use my new mic for the first time. turns out this podcast might also get rebroadcast on AM radio in West Virginia. Now that's a first for me! Despite my temporary, less-than-optimal Tucson AZ hotel "studio" with efficient lighting and a…
Above image courtesy of Samsung's SATA to PCIe article, excerpt here: When the 8 channels in typical applications are multiplied by the 400 MB/s transfer rate spanning multiple NAND Flash memories, the result is a 3.2 GB/s data transfer speed. This transfer rate is out of range for SATA to…
I actually enjoy playing around with beta code, because I like getting a peek at where things are headed. I also enjoy hitting the ground running, when the final product finally arrives. For over a decade now, in my home the family's PCs tend to be at the very latest OS level, usually a month or…
Please note what been in TinkerTry's tagline, since January 2013: TinkerTry IT @ home Efficient virtualization, storage, backup, and more... So it's rather theme-appropriate for me to be happy to share that Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE is now generally available, download…
I've been waiting for the release of Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE for around 7 months now. It all started with this October 2014 post by Mike Resseler, Product Strategy Specialist for Veeam: Announcing: Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE Here's an excerpt: Does free mean no support? Veeam Endpoint Backup…
The lovely farmer’s market in downtown Mainz, on a beautiful Saturday Sep 27th, 2014. Right near the Gutenberg Museum. My work with IBM on VVol (Virtual Volume) over at IBM's European Storage Competence Center is now published! If you read TinkerTry last September, you know I went to work at Ma…
Disclaimer: This device is not on VMware's HCL, and is not officially supported by VMware. See also VMware USB info here and here. Note that I'm still doing some testing with a variety of equipment, and am awaiting the RTM vSphere 6. But so far, using Rufus with this particular SanDisk continue to do …
Use Parted Magic to help maintain your 2.5" (laptop sized) SSDs in one of many ways: retry an older SSD (pre-2012) that is acting up, or performing slowly reuse an SSD that you want to give to somebody else in your family repurpose an SSD for testing out clean installs, such as the latest Windo…
WS2012R2E (Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials) is a powerful, versatile product. Since 2013, I've been using it for daily backups of my extended family's 14 PCs, in my home, and over VPN remotely. It's running as a VM under VMware ESXi 5.5. But WS2012 R2E hasn't always been the simplest to …
Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials is GA for about a year now. It's the evolution of products that originated with Windows Home Server back in late 2007, which was based on 32 bit Window 2003. It's now based on the very capable Windows Server 2012 R2, with a streamlined interface reminiscent of its…
By default, the Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE backs your system when it can. A simple next/next/next default install chooses 12:30am for that daily backup. So if your computer is on at 12:30am, the "Veeam Endpoint Backup" Windows Service can trigger that backup. What if your computer is set…
First: read To get started, I'd strongly recommend reading these closely-related, very recent articles: Free NFR of Veeam Availability Suite v8 with Backup & Replication for VCPs, vExperts, and many other certified professionals Microsoft left the home backup server market, is Veeam Endpoint …
...and they're giving Surface Pro 3 to 6 lucky beta testers. Sounds intriguing, especially for a v1 release. I listened in to a portion of their Webinar today, and wanted to share some initial impressions, based on what I heard so far. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but Andreas …
I recently noticed my Windows 8.1 laptop wasn't getting backed up daily. You will still want to be sure you aren't low on disk storage to help prevent this issue from cropping up again. But if you're in a pinch, and just want to get your daily backups going again before you've had the time to r…
This is a bit of a strange one, but here's the circumstance I ran into today, when trying to troubleshoot why a particular backup was failing. The warnings may have been a little strangely worded Backup details says Insufficient storage available for backup available. but the action plan seemed…
TinkerTry - PCs, EVs, home tech, efficiency and more, including virtualization. My opinions here, not my employer's.
Paul Braren, MCSE in 1998, VCP #2681 in 2005, vExpert 2014 to 2024, Veeam Vanguard Emeritus, 2015 to 2019.
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After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop selling them in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. So far, Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh looking a little better for 2024. More cores, but still just PCIe Gen4 and DDR4. Looking ahead, I'm glad it's Pat Gelsinger at Intel's helm. I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when Pat was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.
Easily update VMware ESXi at TinkerTry.com/easy-update-to-latest-esxi
